Next week my work will be featured at the Cousen Rose Gallery in Oak Bluffs, Martha’s Vineyard, MA. Owner Zita Cousens has exhibited my work since 1997. We met when I was waiting tables and she and her husband Mike used to come in for dinner on a regular basis. They always came late after Gallery openings and the other wait staff wanted out – I always volunteered to stay. After a time Zita found out I was a painter and asked me to bring in some of my work. From the beginning she believed in me. I was working very much off the beaten path of the other local artists who primarily sell representational work. She has stood behind my artwork through all of its growth and changes without ever questioning where it was headed.

Next Saturday night my work will be up and I will walk into the gallery reception and Zita Cousens will have outdone herself in the modest space she has to present my work. For a few hours we will celebrate the exhibit and win or lose, sales or no sales, I will walk away knowing that the work is a true extension of myself, an accumulation of my own personal expression, represented by a Gallery owner who has always believed in me.

If you are on Martha’s Vineyard at all this summer, please come by and have a look.

On another note, I was very excited to have Mary Grauerholz interview me a few months ago and write a feature piece about my work for the Cape Cod Life ART 2011 special annual edition which has just been published. The magazine is widely availabe on the Cape and Islands and can be viewed online here as well.